There are few things worse than feeling lonely. Loneliness comes, in my experience, from the most surprising places. You can have a stable of caring, supporting friends; a solid family, a husband, a sister, a cat, and you can still feel it. Because loneliness does not always come from the outside. Sometimes it crawls into your stomach like a tiny moth, and flies up against your organs with a fluttery, empty resilience. That’s the loneliness I’ve felt, and it has come, primarily, from living with illness in a healthy world.